


you’re my dream come true (aka the palm springs au)

by amazingsantiago



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Falling In Love, IT’S FINALLY HERE, One Shot, the palm springs au!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazingsantiago/pseuds/amazingsantiago
Summary: Jake has lived this day a thousand times, and he’s destined to live it a thousand more, stuck in an infinite time loop at a wedding in Palm fucking Springs, miserable and with a girl who doesn’t love him. Then, when all hope is lost, the Maid of Honor follows him into a cave in the middle of the desert.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 35
Kudos: 135





	you’re my dream come true (aka the palm springs au)

**Author's Note:**

> for @nylesniall. thanks for putting up with me this week as i wrote this, thanks for being the one to encourage me to do it in the first place, and thanks again for letting me watch the movie with you. love you sm!!! 
> 
> (while this is an au and does not mention the police or nypd at any moment, before each one of my fics i'm going to remind you that these are idealised fictional characters - based on an idealised piece of fiction - and do not represent my feelings towards the police in anyway. it is my greatest wish that you enjoy my fics simply as works of fiction and nothing more).

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_ ,” a familiar voice whispers. 

He opens his eyes immediately, a quick assessment confirming that, _yes_ , he is still in the same bed, wearing the same blue t-shirt as the day before and has the same sinking feeling in his stomach that has become synonymous with his morning routine. 

A notification pings on his phone, reminding him that it’s November 9th, the day of the wedding. He slams it back on the nightstand, cracking the screen. He doesn’t need a reminder. In his world, it’s _always_ November 9th. 

Jake has lived this day a thousand times, and he’s destined to live it a thousand more, stuck in an infinite time loop at a wedding in Palm _fucking_ Springs, miserable and with a girl who doesn’t love him.

At least he doesn’t have to do laundry. 

He rolls over and is greeted with the same sight as always, Sophia wrapped in a towel, her leg extended as she moisturizes. She got up early to do her hair and make-up and he grins, knowing that in a few short minutes she’ll be running back to the bridal suite, sweaty, her hair mussed and make-up ruined; it will be his fault that the wedding is late and the bride will shoot daggers at him as she walks down the aisle. 

Worth it. He’s gotta have _some_ fun stuck in this nightmare. Plus, after seeing the ceremony he doesn’t know how many times, finding a million ways to disrupt it has become a bit of a pastime for him. 

“Good morning.”

He knew she would say that, too. 

“That’s a good leg,” he responds automatically. And it _is_ a good leg. He tells her so everyday. And everyday she puts down the moisturiser, declares “this is happening,” and practically jumps him. 

Once upon a time, he would’ve been _thrilled_. An equally enthusiastic participant in their pre-wedding hook-up. She’s beautiful and smart and smells amazing. She likes Die Hard and hot wings and playing ping pong and, for some reason he has yet to discover, sex with him. He sees the stares from the other dudes at the wedding, knows he is punching _way_ above his weight, that he should be so lucky to date someone like Sophia Perez, and yet every morning he lies there as she rides him, staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing. 

He hasn’t felt anything for a while. 

She’s cheating on him with Terry, the super buff officiant that cries every time he pronounces his friends husband and wife. 

He found out on the original November 9th… years… maybe decades ago. He has no idea. Time is meaningless now. He has no annual holidays to mark it’s passing; no getting drunk on New Year’s and kissing strangers, no Halloween, Thanksgiving or Fourth of July. He’ll never light another candle on his mom’s Menorah.

All he knows is that he caught her and Terry in this very room, ran off to the desert to cry, wandered into a glowing orange cave and now he’s stuck with her forever and ever, unable to break things off. No matter what he does, what he says or where he goes, he ends up right back here in their hotel room, admiring Sophia’s smooth, silky leg. 

He flips her over because his day is always easier if he makes her come and kisses down her body, putting that big mouth of his to good use.

He knows exactly what she likes and smirks in satisfaction when she orgasms in record time. 

He initiates Round Two in the bathroom as she tries to fix her hair, more because he has nothing better to do than out of an actual desire to be with her, and afterwards when she’s running to the bridal suite to have her make-up redone, he pulls on his blue palm leaf Hawaiian shirt and matching blue shorts he wears everyday, his only decision whether or not he can be bothered to button it. 

Today, he cannot. 

Jake heads for the pool and his beloved pizza-shaped float, bailing on Sophia and the ceremony. There’s only so many times you can hear two people you don’t care about compare their love to a Nancy Meyers’ movie before you want to kill yourself. He passed his limit a long, long time ago. 

He climbs aboard the pizza, takes a sip of his beer, and, underneath the warmth of the Palm Springs’ sun, he relaxes. 

If this was all there was to the time loop thing, floating on an inflatable pizza, drinking beer and humming his favourite Taylor Swift song, he’d be all in. No complaints. But despite the good, the no laundry, the pool, and the ability to hook up with anyone and everyone at the wedding without having to deal with any repercussions, it’s a lonely existence here on his own.

Well, not _completely_ alone. He has Charles; a small, mild-mannered man who asks him how is day is, everyday, even though nothing in this time loop ever fucking changes. 

“Today, tomorrow, yesterday, it’s all the same,” he recites from the standardised script of his life, rolling his eyes when Charles tells him to be positive, that anything could happen. 

Like clockwork, the wedding guests clap and confetti catches in the gentle breeze. He pats his only friend on the shoulder and sails his pizza to shore, ready to get his party on. 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

There’s scattered applause as she finishes her toast (two pages long, single-spaced, double-sided: Santiago Style), sitting down and draining the remainder of her champagne flute. She signals to the bartender for another, her cheeks still flush with embarrassment. There is nothing more mortifying as an older sister than attending a baby’s sister’s wedding - very, very single - and getting up to talk about relationships and love and happiness, a field in which she has absolutely no knowledge. 

It’s been a shit day all round. 

Already counting down the minutes until this is over, she’s relieved when Adrian’s speech is short, sweet and to the point: “I LOVE ROSA DIAZ!” screamed at the top of his lungs. 

He kisses his wife and amidst the rapturous applause, Amy slips away unnoticed. 

She’s halfway to the bar when Sophia’s boyfriend commandeers the mic. It screeches loudly, almost deafening every elderly aunt, uncle and grandparent in the room. She looks around, surprised. “If I may give a speech of my own,” he says, clearing his throat dramatically. “We are born lost, then we are found... but we are all just lost, am I right?” She catches his eye and it’s like he has a ticket right into her soul. Like he’s talking to her and nobody else. She takes a few steps closer to him, intrigued. 

“But our friends,” he gestures at the bride and groom, “they stuck a middle finger in the face of all that adversity. They found each other.”

“Here you are,” he stares at her intently once more, forgetting about everybody else in the room, “standing on the precipice of something so much bigger than anyone here. And it may be frightening and filled with doubt, but always remember, you are not alone. Everyone here is your family. We are your world and we will cheer you on with delight in our eyes as you achieve your dreams. So raise a glass,” he opens his can of beer with one hand and she thinks _hot_ , before he returns to his original statement, “we may be born lost, but _you_ are now found. LET’S DANCE!” 

Electronic music bursts through the speakers and relatives flood the dance floor. He disappears in the crowd. She shakes her head as she returns to the bar; she must have been imagining it. 

The bartender refills her glass and she finds an empty table, nursing her drink as she watches everyone enjoy themselves. Rosa and Adrian are the life of the party, jumping around wildly, limbs everywhere. Her mom and aunt argue about the flower arrangements in rapid Spanish, a bridesmaid and groomsman start making out and her thirteen year old cousin teaches a group of younger cousins the latest TikTok dance. Amy’s the only one not having fun. 

Hitchcock, a friend of Adrian’s, noticing her sitting alone, drunkenly approaches and asks her for a dance.

She takes in his bolo tie, crumpled shirt and mismatching jacket and pants. There’s what looks like ketchup around his mouth and he smells like he hasn’t showered in a week. 

“Not even if it would cure cancer,” she says flatly, relieved when he takes no for an answer and dances away. 

What is it about her that attracts weirdos? 

She takes another sip of her wine and, speaking of weirdos, locks eyes with Sophia’s boyfriend across the room. 

He points at her and before she can mouth _what the fuck do you_ **_want_** , he starts dancing. He weaves through the sea of wedding guests with practiced ease, incorporating their dance moves into his own routine as he passes, maintaining the most intense eye contact she’s ever shared with anyone in her life. He steals a shot from someone’s hand, intercepts a spinning aunt before she can crash into the wedding cake and sandwiches himself between two guests as one slaps his butt. It’s almost choreographed, like he’s done this before, like he can predict everyone’s moves with terrifying accuracy, which makes _her_ sound like the weird one. 

Her heart races as she realises he’s heading in her direction. 

She doesn’t know what this guy’s deal is, why he’s so obsessed with her. It’s not like they’ve ever met before. She doesn’t even know his name, only recognises him from a rare appearance on Sophia’s Instagram feed in between beach pics and over-edited selfies. 

Suddenly, he’s right in front of her, holding out his hand, asking her to dance. 

“I don’t do that,” she says. 

“What? Dance?” He raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Everybody dances.”

She shrugs. “Not me.”

“But you’re the Maid of Honor... it’s, like, in the rule book that you have to dance.”

“Not in my rule book.” She’s a terrible dancer. Always has been. Where Rosa excelled in ballet, winning all the solos and plaudits from the other parents, Amy confused her first position with her third, stepped on toes left, right and center and even broke her friend’s nose with a pirouette gone wrong. After the girl’s nose was reset and thankfully didn’t look _too_ crooked, her parents pulled her out of dance and let her join a book club for kids instead. She’s never danced since.

“Fine.” He admits defeat, sitting in the empty seat next to her. “You smell nice,” he says after a beat. 

She blushes, tucking her hair behind both ears. “It’s-.”

“Orchid Explosion by Fournier,” he finishes her sentence. 

“Yes,” she says, taken aback. “It was a birthday present from Rosa. How did you know that?”

“Ex girlfriend used to wear it,” he responds, deftly changing the subject. “I’m Jake Peralta, by the way.”

“Amy Santiago.” She smiles, fascinated by this stranger, by _Jake_ , with his messy hair and Hawaiian shirt and killer dance moves. “You’re Sophia’s boyfriend, right? I don’t think we met at the rehearsal dinner last night.” 

“Oh, I didn’t go. I fucking hate these things.”

“Me too!” She says excitedly. “This wedding is all I’ve heard about for _months_. The dress, the flowers, the seating plan. Rosa’s made me watch every Nancy Meyers’ movie - thrice - just to get the right _aura_. Do you know how hard it is to plan an entire wedding around the _aura_ of a romcom director? I’m _so_ sick of it.”

He laughs, this infectious, happy laugh that makes his eyes crinkle in the corners and his head tip back, and it immediately becomes her favourite sound in the world.

“Tell me about it, Santiago.”

“So, your speech,” she raises her eyebrows, “I guess you didn’t mean any of it?”

“Not a word. We’re all fucking alone.” He leans in closer and before she can return the compliment about him smelling good, too, he asks if she wants to go somewhere _they_ can be alone. 

Was she really being that obvious?

“We’ve only just met,” she points out, visibly flustered. What she wants to say is _hell yes_ and pull him in for a kiss, but he has a girlfriend and they only met like - two minutes ago. That would be crazy. “What would Sophia think to us running off together?”

“I think she’s a bit busy to notice right now.”

Amy furrows her brow in a _what does_ **_that_ ** _mean_ kind of way. He grabs her hand in lieu of a response and takes her outside, rounding the building until he reaches a window into one of the bedrooms. She steps closer and peers inside, gasping when she sees a naked Sophia and Terry, still in his perfectly tailored tux, going down on Jake’s girlfriend. 

“Yeah,” Jake laments, sinking to the floor. 

Amy sits down beside him. “Never liked her anyway,” she comments, nudging him with her shoulder. 

He smiles, shaking his head. “I should’ve broken up with her a long time ago.”

“And... why didn’t you?” Now _she’s_ the one being forward, but there’s just something about him. 

“It’s complicated,” he sighs. “And she likes Die Hard.”

“Dreamboat.” 

“Yeah.”

“You know, I’ve never actually seen those movies,” she says casually. 

“WHAT?” He yells a little too loud. The moaning inside pauses, then resumes a few seconds later when they don’t hear any other noise. Jake breathes a sigh of relief. “That is literally insane,” he hisses. “Die Hard is the greatest franchise of all time.”

She bites her lip, figures that if his girlfriend is with another dude a few feet away she might as well be _completely_ forward, and suggests maybe watching it together some time. 

“Maybe.” He gets this distant, faraway look in his eye and turns away from her. 

She thinks of questioning him on it, asking if he’s OK, but it seems personal, and she’s still a positive stranger. 

“We should probably leave,” she says instead, nodding at the window. “This is kinda fucked up.”

“So fucked up,” he agrees, looking back at her. 

They share a smile. He feels it, she feels it, spark’s fly, they hear Sophia climax, shit’s getting real. Connection. 

“Come on, let’s go.” He jumps up, holding her hand and running for the desert. 

“Where are you taking me?” She squeaks, a little breathless after their weird romantic moment thingy and trying to keep up with him in heels. 

“I know a place,” he grins. 

The place, as it turns out, is a large rock outside a cave. 

It’ll do. 

She grabs the collar of his Hawaiian shirt, pushes him against the rock, and starts full on making out with him. 

It’s so good and _he’s so good_ and she never, ever wants this to stop. 

“Are you sure about this?” He double checks.

She hums her agreement against his lips. She’s had four drinks. And while even Four Drink Amy would usually be a lot more cautious about having sex outside where anybody could see them, there’s literally nobody around. She fumbles with the buttons on his shirt, tugging the material off his shoulders and throwing it unceremoniously to the ground. Together, they manage to remove his shorts without breaking the kiss, only reluctantly parting for a second so she can slip out of her pink bridesmaid’s dress. She drops it to the floor, standing in front of him in her nicest underwear. 

“Noice,” Jake smirks.

There’s a sudden roar of an engine approaching and Amy screams, hiding behind him. 

She screams louder when an arrow flies into his back. 

He takes off, running toward the cave, and a figure dressed all in black chases after him. 

“WHAT THE _FUCK_?” She cries, frantically pulling her dress back on and following them to the cave’s entrance. “WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK-.”

She stops dead, transfixed by a glowing orange light coming from within. 

“Jake?” She shouts after him. 

There’s no answer. 

She squints and can’t see him either. The light is blinding. 

With no choice but to go after the guy she was about to fuck, the guy will ill-tamed curls and a smile that makes her heart skip a beat, she walks towards the light. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

The shower is running when she opens her eyes and, all at once, the memories of the last twenty-four hours hit her like a truck. 

The rehearsal dinner, the wedding, nearly hooking up with a stranger on a rock. 

Her stomach twists and her head pounds. She’s _never_ drinking again. 

Reaching blearily for her phone, realising she hasn’t even seen any of the wedding photos from the photographer _she_ commissioned, she sees a couple dozen missed calls from her mom, more from Rosa and one from an unknown number she doesn’t recognize. It’s a Calendar notification that piques her interest most.

TODAY - Wedding!!!! 

“What the fuck,” she mumbles, opening the app, November 9th clearly circled as today’s date. 

The shower shuts off and she throws on last night’s dress, hightailing it out of the room and into the lobby, where her whole family is gathered. 

“There you are!” Camila exclaims, hugging her tightly. “We’ve been looking for you for _hours_. We’ve been so worried.”

“I’m fine, mom,” she assures her, apart from making the biggest mistake of her life and having a hangover from hell and somehow reliving a day that already happened. 

Her stomach twists again and she snatches a pillowcase from a nearby maid’s cart, throwing up into it. She mutters an embarrassed apology as she hands the pillowcase back, spying Jake through the window behind her. 

Forgetting about her stomach, she storms out of the ranch. This is somehow _his_ fault. _He_ did this to her. 

“WHAT THE FUCK, PERALTA,” she barks, any romantic feelings she may have had for him evaporating. This day sucked enough the first time. She has no desire to repeat it. 

“Good morning to you, too, Santiago,” he says calmly, floating on his inflatable pizza slice, Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned, unfazed by her reaction. 

“IT’S NOVEMBER 9TH. _WHY_ IS IT NOVEMBER 9TH AGAIN?”

He sighs. “You followed me into the cave and now you’re stuck here, too.”

“Stuck where?” She demands an answer, throwing an inflatable donut at him. 

It bounces off his head. “OK, _ow_. You’re gonna have to be a lot nicer to me than that now we’re stuck in an infinite time loop together.” 

“An infinite _what_?” There’s no way she can have heard him right. 

“One of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about,”

“That I might have heard about?” She echoes.

He fiddles with his sunglasses to undercut the awkwardness. “Yeah... This is today. Today is yesterday. And tomorrow is also today.” 

“How do I stop it? I don’t want tomorrow to be today, I want tomorrow to be _tomorrow_.”

“Right,” he grimaces. “Slight problem. You can’t stop it. Believe me, I’ve tried. Tomorrow will always and forever now be today.” 

* * *

**10:30 AM. November 9th. A Lesson In Infinite Time Loops. The Cave. Palm Springs, CA.**

“Thought I’d find you here.”

She stops pacing in front of the unopened cave. It was open last night, or tonight, or whatever. There was a glowing orange light and a large mouth, but now they’re both gone.

“How do I get in?”

“You gotta wait,” he explains mysteriously.

“Wait for what?” 

_Patience_ , he feels like telling her. He had to find all this out for himself. But since she looks so cute in her short butterfly dress and stress braids, he decides to put her out of her misery. 

He hops onto the rock and raises his arms to the sky. “I am the Antichrist,” he declares, snapping his fingers a half-second before the ground shakes. 

Amy looks totally freaked out. And somehow even _cuter_. 

He jumps back down to the ground. “Just kidding,” he says, already obsessed with the way she rolls her eyes when he teases her. Already obsessed with everything about her, if he’s being honest. 

“ _How did you do that_?” 

“There’s an earthquake here the same time everyday. That’s how the cave opens.” She starts to walk towards it, so he grabs her arm. “Don’t go in there.” 

“And why not?” She frees herself, placing her hand on her hip. “I’m not gonna make out with you on that rock again.”

“Not what I was thinking of, but good to know where your head’s at,” he smirks. “What I meant was that you’re never gonna find what you’re looking for in there. Once you go in, the whole day just resets to wherever you woke up this morning. Same thing if you stick around. The second you fall asleep, it all goes back to the start.” 

“This infinite time loop thing is so fucking annoying,” she mutters, beginning her slow trudge back to the ranch. 

* * *

**10:30 PM. November 9th 2019. Escape Plan A. On A Highway Somewhere.**

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re staying awake, yeah, yeah, yeah,” she sings to herself, drumming the steering wheel. 

She takes another sip of her massive coffee. She can’t fall asleep. She falls asleep, she’s right back in that hotel room. And she can’t go back there. 

She keeps driving, pushing her foot down a little harder on the pedal, drinking more coffee and writing an entire album she’d call _Stay Awake (And Fuck Infinite Time Loops)_ , dedicated to Jake Fucking Peralta. 

She pulls over at a gas station in Texas, hopping out of her car and opening the fuel cap. She inserts the nozzle and starts refuelling. 

She’s fucking exhausted. Dead on her feet. Her eyelids are heavy, drooping. 

“Stay awake, Amy,” she reminds herself, staring determinately at the numbers ticking upwards. 

She falls asleep before the tank is even half full and wakes up back in Palm Springs, screaming into her pillow. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_.”

He opens his eyes immediately, completing the daily check. Same bed. Same blue tee. Same sinking feeling. He sighs, wishing he could sleep forever. 

There’s a loud bang on their door, followed by a series of dull, quieter bangs, like someone is smacking their head against it. 

Sophia opens the door, wrapped in her towel, mid-moisturising sesh, because of course she fucking is. 

The sinking feeling lifts slightly when Amy marches in, her presence an antidote to the time loop depression, like Die Hard and Taylor Swift and pizza. 

“Get dressed. We’re leaving. I can’t stay here anymore,” she announces. 

“Wait,” Sophia interjects, picking up on the way his eyes linger on Amy. They both know he’s never looked at her like that. “Are you fucking cheating on me?”

“No,” Jake laughs, “you’re cheating on me, ya goof.” 

She kicks him out of the room, shoves his clothes into his arms and slams the door firmly shut. The click of the lock, or the fact his key card is still inside, doesn’t bother him. He’ll still wake up back there. He always does. 

“So,” he turns to Amy, “what are you gonna do about it?” 

“Aren’t you gonna get dressed first?” She asks, motioning towards his bare thighs. 

“Eyes up here, Santiago,” he teases, stepping into his shorts and exchanging his blue t-shirt for his signature Hawaiian one, leaving it unbuttoned. “There. So, what are you gonna do about it?”

* * *

**9:53 AM. November 9th. Escape Plan B. Just Outside Palm Springs, CA.**

“How are you so calm about this?” She asks him the question he can tell has been bugging her for a while. 

“Didn’t used to be calm. I’ve been here a while, remember? But eventually I decided to give up trying to make sense of it all, to stop trying to escape, and accept my new normal. I figured the only way to really live in this is to embrace the fact that nothing matters. I calmed down pretty quick after that.”

She glances at him, then back at the road. “If nothing matters, then what’s the point of living?” 

“We kind of have no choice _but_ to live.”

She thinks about the permeatations of that for a second. “So we can’t die?”

“Nope. The loop just starts over.” He scratches his head. “If there’s some way of killing yourself, I haven’t figured it out yet. And I’ve done a lot of suicides.” 

“I’m gonna get out of this,” Amy says determinately, clenching her jaw, gripping the steering wheel tighter, and pressing her foot down on the gas. 

Jake unfastens his seatbelt and places his head against the dashboard. They may not be able to die, but pain is very real. And he knows from previous loops that there’s nothing worse than dying slowly in the ICU. 

Amy copies him, braces for impact, and then turns the wheel sharply, driving them off the road. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_.”

He opens his eyes, sees nothing has changed, and goes right back to sleep. 

* * *

**9:55 PM. November 9th. Escape Plan C. Shaw’s Bar. Palm Springs, CA.**

He takes her to his favourite bar on her fifteenth day in the loop, neither of them interested in reliving the wedding again. Sophia will make the ceremony late, Camila will cry, Pimento will yell “I LOVE ROSA DIAZ!” and everyone will dance. He’s seen it a thousand times; it’s numbing in its predictability. 

Shaw’s is his respite. 

He discovered it pretty early on, wandering aimlessly through the desert after discovering his girlfriend cheating again, drawn in by the cosy exposed brick interior and fairy lights. There’s a pool table and darts and great drinks and a feeling of home that he can’t seem to find anywhere else. 

_Couldn’t_. Past tense. Amy is already starting to feel home, too. 

He orders two beers and leads her to a booth in one corner, away from the other patrons; Scully, drinking alone at the bar, and Gina, seemingly livestreaming her evening for Instagram. If anyone were to hear them talking about infinite time loops and glowing caves, they’d probably be institutionalised. 

Amy’s quiet at first, looking around the bar. There’s laughter from Gina’s table. Scully starts to cry. Someone throws a dart. She looks back at him. 

“Who was the guy from the other night?”

“The other night?” He feigns innocence. Of course, he knows she means Ray Holt. There was no other guy she would be referring to. He just... doesn’t like to talk about it. Like most things in his life, it’s complicated. 

“The guy who _tried to kill you with an arrow_?” She jogs his memory, widening her eyes. “We’re stuck here together for the rest of eternity and yet I feel like I don’t even know you.”

“Right.” It’s a fair point, he thinks, mentally weighing up the pros and cons of telling her. 

_Pro_ : They are in this together and she deserves to know if her life is at risk and why. 

_Con_ : They are in this together and her life is at risk. Telling her might mean she never speaks to him again. He doesn’t want to lose her. 

_Pro_ : He likes telling her things. It makes him feel less alone. And she’s a great listener. 

_Con_ : She may think less of him and never speak to him again. He doesn’t want to lose her. 

_Pro_ : She’s stubborn and will ask him the same question for the rest of eternity. 

_Con_ : She’s stubborn and may never speak to him again for the rest of eternity.

He sighs, the overriding fear of losing her pretty much making the decision for him. “He was a guest at the wedding, Pimento’s old boss, or something. Name’s Ray Holt. That’s all I know about the dude. He’s like a robot.”

“A robot who wants to _kill you_ ,” she emphasises. He detects a flash of concern across her face, but brushes it off as his imagination. Or wishful thinking. Or both. “You still haven’t told me why.”

“One night, many moons ago, I partied with Ray,” he reveals. “We got _suuuuper_ drunk, slow danced in each other’s arms, somehow ended up in a bathtub. He told me it was the greatest night of his life. That he wished he could stay here forever.”

“Oh no,” Amy croaks, anticipating where this is going. 

“Yeah.” He winces. “It’s bad. It was back in the early days. I was lonely and dumb and hadn’t developed the tolerance for drinking beer from 10 AM yet. I fucked up, took him to the cave and told him to go inside. When he found out about his new life, he did _not_ take it well. Been trying to kill me ever since. Luckily, he lives out of town so he doesn’t come by every day, but...”

“Still sucks.”

“Still sucks,” he agrees, drinking his beer. He places the bottle back on the table and taps his fingers restlessly against the glass. “I vowed to never bring anyone into this life again.”

She opens her mouth as if she’s going to say something, interrupted by Gina waltzing over to the booth. 

“Hey girl,” she says to Jake, “wanna lend me $800 for a new phone?”

“What’s wrong with the one you’ve got?” He asks as she taps away at her keyboard. 

She shrugs, still typing. “Bored of it. So, will you do it?”

“Fine.” He pulls out his own phone, the crack from the previous loop fixed when Amy went into the cave and the day reset, and transfers the money. 

Gina kisses his forehead, says “thanks, girl!” and skips back to her own table. 

“The money will be back in my account at midnight,” he explains at Amy’s raised eyebrows. “She’ll never know. Besides, material matters don’t really concern me anymore.” 

“With the exception of booze and pizza and pizza-shaped inflatable pool floats?” 

“You do know me.” He smiles at her and there’s that spark again, the same as the night everything changed. 

She must feel it too because she asks him what’s the deal with fucking people in here. 

“ _Great_ question.” 

“You _must_ , right? It would be crazy not to. Nobody else remembers. There’s no consequences, no awkward walk of shames the next morning. It’s, like, the dream.”

He doesn’t mention that the real dream, at least for him, would be to settle down, buy a house with a pool so he can keep his pizza float, maybe get married (he still hates weddings and the circus around them, but he’s relived this day enough times to admit that it would be nice to have what Rosa and Adrian have, to be in love and happy and shout “I LOVE MY WIFE!” at the top of his voice). 

The constant stream of one night stands is _fine_ but it’s meaningless. He’d rather do it with someone he loves. 

Still, he lists everyone he’s fucked at the wedding. “The bartender, your cousin Isabella, Terry, one time, just to see what Sophia liked so much.”

“ _And_?” She wonders, intrigued. 

“I get it,” he confirms. “Guy gives good head.”

She giggles, rolling her eyes at him. “Who else?”

“Tried to fuck Rosa one time. Cut in during the first dance. Did not work.”

“ _Jake_!” She yelps, screwing her face up in disgust. “That’s my _sister_.”

“Speaking of your relatives, I did fuck your dad once. A magnificent lover,” he says dreamily. 

“ _What_?”

“Just kidding. The last one was a joke.”

She throws her beer mat at him and he dodges it just in time. 

She narrows her eyes and he can practically _see_ the cogs whirring in her mind. “Have I done that to you before?” She asks suspiciously. 

“What? No,” he answers way too quick. “I’ve just got super sharp reflexes.”

It’s clear she doesn’t believe him. “Have _we_ ever hooked up?”

“Me and you?” He scoffs. “No way. Nuh uh. I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this before, Santiago, but you’re repulsive. I would never sleep with you.”

“I would never sleep with you either.”

And this time it’s _his_ turn not to believe _her_. 

“I think that’s a good rule, anyway,” she adds. “Not hooking up with someone you’re stuck in an infinite time loop with. Less messy.”

“Good rule,” he lies. “Good rule, no sex, good rule.”

“Maybe it’s a karma thing.”

“A karma thing?” He questions, thrown by her complete one eighty. He’s still thinking about sex. 

“The infinite time loop thing. What if, in order to get out of here, you have to be selfless and then you’re free.”

“I just gave Gina $800 for a new phone and I’m still here,” he points out. 

“Real selflessness,” she replies. “Like the blood drive Rosa goes to even though she hates it. What if life just keeps going for everyone else here, but not you and me until we’ve earned our way out?”

He considers it for a moment, unconvinced. The first two plans didn’t work; there’s no evidence this would either. “What’s the most selfless act you could think of? Something that would guarantee this day would end.”

Her face lights up with an idea. 

“We’ve gotta get back to the wedding.” 

She downs the rest of her drink and runs out of the bar and follows hot on her heels. The ranch isn’t far and her dad is still giving his toast when they burst through the doors. 

He watches as she heads for the bride, whispering something in Rosa’s ear. 

Whatever she said, Rosa reacts badly, flipping the table and smashing her first into the cake. He moves out of her way as she storms past him. 

“What the hell did you say to her?” He hisses as a gleeful Amy returns to his side. 

“Sister stuff,” she says vaguely. “But I think I’m good. Selflessness is just... it’s fantastic.” 

“Clearly,” he nods at the sound of Pimento wailing in the background. 

“Well, Jake, this has been great,” she claps her hands together, “well, you know, not great, but it’s been interesting.”

_Certainly has_ , he agrees. 

“Good luck with your murderous robot friend. And hey, in all your future loops, please keep me out of that fucking cave.”

“I’ll try,” he laughs as she waves goodbye and then disappears to her room. 

He can hear her scream of “MOTHER _FUCKER_ ” echo around the hotel the next morning. 

_Plan D?_ he texts her, getting out of bed and breezing past Sophia and her leg. 

She’s got nothing on Amy anyway. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

“WAKE UP,” Amy yells, banging on their hotel room door. 

Sophia opens it, wrapped in her fluffy white towel. Amy barges past her to get to Jake. 

“Didn’t work, life is meaningless, let’s get the fuck out of here.” 

His eyes light up, an excited smile spreading across his face that disappears in an instant when Sophia opens her mouth. 

“ _Are you fucking cheating on me_?” They say at the same time. 

“ _What_?”

“ _THIS ISN’T FUNNY_ ,” they both cry. 

“ _OK, stop_.”

“ _I’m serious_.”

“ _STOP COPYING ME_!”

“ _Stop pretending like you know everything_!”

They both scream. 

“OK, I’m gonna go,” he says, leaving her to finish moisturising. 

He bumps Amy’s shoulder as they walk out the hotel and towards the pool. “Sorry Plan D didn’t work either.”

“It was stupid-.”

“No.” He stops her, his voice suddenly serious. “It’s not stupid. If anyone’s gonna figure out how to get out of this, it’s gonna be _you_. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, rising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. 

He blushes, the tips of his ears turning the same colour as her dress. “So, uh,” he coughs awkwardly, “what do you want to do today?”

“Let’s waste some time.”

* * *

**10:00 AM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights of Peralta and Santiago. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

They commence with an inflatable pool float race, Jake aboard the pizza, Amy picking out a flamingo, and it is immediately more competitive than any Olympic Sprint, Superbowl or World Cup Final combined. 

“Are you ready?”

“I was _born_ ready,” she responds confidently. 

“To lose? The whole question was ‘are you ready to lose?’ and you said you were born that way,” he smirks over at her. 

She rolls her eyes. “Twist my words all you want, Peralta, I’m winning this race.”

“No way, Santiago. _I’m_ winning this race. I hope you enjoy my victory speech.”

“I hope you enjoy _mine_.”

“Well, I hope your flamingo bursts,” he fires back. 

She gasps, covering its ears as if her flamingo made of plastic and air would be offended. It’s only fair she retaliates. 

“I hope you _drown_.”

A beat. “Is it weird that that turned me on a little bit?”

While he ponders the answer, Amy shouts “GO” and starts paddling. 

Quickly realising what she’s just done, he desperately chases after her. His pizza float, a more aerodynamic shape than her flamingo, makes good time and at the halfway point it’s neck and neck. 

He glances over at her. She’s paddling furiously, her tongue stuck out in concentration. It’s maybe the cutest thing he’s ever seen. 

The distraction hands her the advantage and she reaches the finish line first, celebrating wildly. 

And, OK, _that_ is the cutest thing he’s ever seen. 

“Best out of three?” He suggests.

“You’re on, Peralta.” 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

JAKE PERALTA, 9:40 AM:

Guess what day it is??????

AMY SANTIAGO, 9:40 AM:

🤔🤔🤔 No idea. 

JAKE PERALTA, 9:41 AM:

November 9th!!! 

AMY SANTIAGO, 9:41 AM:

That’s come around quick. Feels like only yesterday it was last November 9th

AMY SANTIAGO, 9:41 AM: 

Good morning, by the way. 

JAKE PERALTA, 9:42 AM: 

Morning 😎

AMY SANTIAGO, 9:42 AM:

Want to come get pancakes with me?

JAKE PERALTA, 9:42 AM:

Miss me already Santiago????

JAKE PERALTA, 9:42 AM:

(ofc i want the pancakes. i always want pancakes)

AMY SANTIAGO, 9:43 AM:

You’re the one who texted me as soon as they woke up!!! Seems like YOU’RE the one who missed ME, Peralta

JAKE PERALTA, 9:43 AM:

..... maybe so. see you in 5. 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Shaw’s Bar. Palm Springs, CA.**

She lost a bet. And while she’s still 23-13 up in the overall leaderboard, getting beat in their “who can drink the most beers in an hour” bet, means a) they are both incredibly drunk and b) Jake has to pick something embarrassing/awful/she wouldn’t normally do as their evening activity. 

She’s had him run through the desert naked, get a dick tattoo on his butt and sit through an entire documentary on the font Helvetica. 

He’s had her steal books from the Palm Springs Public Library without checking them out, skydive and try edibles for the first time. 

This is, without a doubt, worse than all of the above. 

He wants her to _dance_. 

“I’m not doing it alone,” she insists. “You’re doing this with me.”

“No problemo. I’m a great dancer.”

He gets them matching denim jackets, white vests, red neck scarves and choreographs a full routine. It takes a lot of stepping on toes, cursing, laughter, and the entire week, to memorise. Despite her best efforts, and Jake’s better-than-expected teaching abilities, she’s yet to make any significant progress on the dancing front. Still, she’s enjoyed herself more than she has in years.

“You OK, Santiago?” He asks a few minutes before the big performance, catching her staring. 

Fairy lights hung haphazardly from the ceiling and wrapped around every beam and post cast a soft, flickering light over him. With his warm brown eyes, unruly curls and a charm smile that makes her heart skip a beat whenever it’s aimed in her direction, she found him attractive from the moment they met. Or, the moment they met that she actually remembers. And as much as she loves the carefree unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt look, this look right here, right now, the denim jacket in particular, is _really_ working for her.

“You look stupid hot right now,” she admits. “It’s distracting.”

He grins. “You look stupid hot, too.”

Floorgasm, Gina’s dance troupe, finish their routine, Gina reminds them to Like and Subscribe and Press The Bell Button To Receive Post Notifications, and then it’s Jake and Amy’s turn. 

They get into their positions, the music starts, and her nerves fade away. Being with him, she’s having the time of her life. She forgets why she ever hated dancing in the first place. 

They shake their butts and wave their hands in front of their faces and for their grand finale, she launches herself at him and wraps her legs around his waist while he spins her around and they flip everyone off. 

There’s a scattered applause when they finish and she slides down his body, smiling so wide. 

“I just won another bet,” he reminds her, the scoreboard now 23- _14_ , “told you I’d catch you.”

She rolls her eyes, wondering what he could possibly make her do next that’s worse than dancing. 

* * *

**10:00 PM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Die Hard marathon_?”

“You told me you wanted to watch it together.”

It feels like a lifetime ago, that conversation outside his hotel room. And yet she remembers it so clearly. Sophia moaning, the sound of his laughter, the way his eyes sparkled as they flirted back and forth. Of course, her offering to watch Die Hard was just another thinly-veiled attempt at flirting, but she sticks to her word.

Jake gets the first movie up on his laptop and Amy sits next to him on the bed, their bodies almost touching; the concept of personal space ditched several loops ago. His excitement is impossibly endearing, and she finds herself watching him more than the movie, equal parts amused and wishing he would _shut the hell up_ , when he whisper-quotes every single line.

She stifles a yawn when the credits roll and he asks if she wants to watch another. And even though she’d rather watch Daniel Craig and his rugged hands in one of the James Bond’s, and she’s feeling pretty exhausted after a full day of wasting time, she agrees to watch the sequel. 

She gives up resisting the urge and yawns ten minutes in, hoping he hasn’t noticed her disrespect his favourite franchise in such a way, but, of course, as with everything about her, he notices.

“Tired, Ames?”

“Ames?” She repeats, picking up on the nickname. That’s new. Up until this point he’s only called her Amy or Santiago or _darling_ (one time, as a joke; she liked it more than she cared it admit). There’s something about Ames that’s softer, more intimate. She likes it. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Is that OK?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hums sleepily, leaning her head on his shoulder, her eyelids drooping. He runs his hands up and down her back, making her even sleepier.

“I bet you won’t be able to stay awake until the end of this movie, Ames.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Sure.”

“I _will_ ,” she insists. “I have to pretend to like Die Hard so you’ll still like me like you like Sophia. Plus, I don’t want to go to sleep. Hate waking up without you.”

Her half-asleep brain is nothing if not brutally honest. 

“I don’t like waking up without you either,” he confesses.

“Don’t then.” She nuzzles into his neck, a smile ghosting onto her face as her eyes slip shut. 

He puts his laptop away and watches her. “For the record,” he whispers, not sure if she can hear him, “I like you whether you like Die Hard or not. And I like you _way_ more than Sophia.”

Her smile widens and she finally succumbs to sleep. 

* * *

**4:40 PM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

AMY SANTIAGO, 4:40 PM:

It’s not a Christmas movie. 

JAKE PERALTA, 4:40 PM:

It’s set on Christmas Eve that’s like... the definition of a Christmas movie, Ames

AMY SANTIAGO, 4:41 PM:

I did some research and they only say “Christmas” 18 times. 

JAKE PERALTA, 4:59 PM: 

I just did the SAME research and they say Christmas more times than explode, die, hard and kill. Peralta 1 - Santiago 0

AMY SANTIAGO, 4:59 PM:

🙄 Bruce Willis doesn’t even think it’s a Christmas film. 

JAKE PERALTA, 5:01 PM:

Can’t believe I’m about to say this... but Bruce Willis is wrong. It’s got Jingle Bells in it!!! Jingle Bells = Christmas

JAKE PERALTA, 5:05 PM:

Pass me the popcorn

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

It’s a dumb idea. 

Really, really dumb. 

And probably illegal. 

But considering everything is meaningless and their day will reset once they go to sleep like nothing happened, they decide to crash the wedding. 

Like he said: really, really, _really_ dumb. 

He bursts through the doors, using everything he learnt from that one Palm Springs improv class he took to convey _fear_ and _worry_. He steals the microphone, and again causes the feedback to nearly deafen the entire extended Santiago family, loudly announcing that there is a _BOMB_ at this wedding. 

Everybody screams.

Amy, sat with the bridal party, and an accomplice to this prank, uses her best acting skills from the same improv class to convey _shock_ and _surprise_. 

The wedding guests run around like headless chickens; there’s pushing and shoving, little Mason taking out his younger twin sisters; someone sounds the fire alarm. 

“Just kidding,” Jake says into the mic. “It’s Amy’s butt. Her butt is the bomb.”

She smiles at him. 

He smiles back at her. 

He’s certain that there’s nobody else he’d rather be stuck in an infinite time loop with. 

And there’s certainly no other butts. 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. A Series: The Days And Nights Of Peralta And Santiago. Shaw’s Bar. Palm Springs, CA.**

She is what can only be described as _giddy_ with excitement as she guides him, blindfolded, into the bar. All she said was that she had a surprise for him and she was gone all day setting it up. 

He can’t believe he’s become that annoying person who misses his Not-A-Girlfriend girlfriend after only a couple of hours apart. 

After hundreds of versions of this day together, too. 

She stops him after a few more steps and takes off his blindfold to reveal the entire bar decorated to the nines. There’s streamers and balloons and a giant “Happy Millionth Birthday, Jake” sign, a blue cake (his favourite flavour) and her, wearing a party hat and sparkly dress he’s never seen before. 

He doesn’t remember the last time someone threw him a birthday party. 

His eyes well with tears, touched, as she leads the Shaw’s patrons into a round of Happy Birthday and then closes the distance between them. 

“I’m not _that_ old, am I?” He asks, horrified. 

“You look pretty good for your age,” she tells him cordially. “Only a couple of grey hairs.”

His hands fly to his head and she laughs. 

“Happy Millionth Birthday, Jake.”

He accepts a beer from Hank and clinks their bottles together. “Here’s to a million more.” 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. Camping. The Desert. Palm Springs, CA.**

After half an hour, plenty of bickering and an incident in which Jake’s hair is _almost_ set alight, they get the campfire burning. 

Jake chews a Twix as a reward for his labour. 

“Think of it like this,” he says, showing her the half-eaten bar and waving his hand in the void where the other half used to be. 

It’s such an inherently Jake thing to do: use a candy bar to explain future and past and the meaning of life in an infinite time loop. 

She can’t believe she’s falling in love with such a dork. 

“The space where the Twix once was but is now in my stomach is the past. And everything that’s remaining is the future. I have no interest in this,” he gestures to the void again, “the who, what, why of your past. You got here, that’s all that matters.”

She sighs exasperatedly. “But if you really want to know someone deeper, it _does_ matter. You want to eat the whole candy bar, right?”

“Of course, but-.”

“I was married for two years,” she reveals before he can return to the Twix analogy. “We got divorced a few months ago.”

“You don’t have to tell me about that.”

“I knew it wasn’t going to work out,” she blanks him, continuing to open up. She needs to talk about this with someone and the only person she wants to talk about this stuff with is him. “He was boring, weirdly obsessed with Pilsners. There was no... spark. He proposed to me five times before I even said yes.”

“ _Ouch_.”

She nods. “I knew it wasn’t going to work out as he was sliding the ring onto my finger. I knew it wasn’t going to work out as I walked down the aisle. Ignoring all that, ignoring the candy I’ve already eaten, would make me destined to repeat it.” She pauses. “What about you? What about your past?”

“There’s nothing.” He shrugs. “I don’t remember anything.”

“Well, then I feel sorry for you. The first bite of the candy is the best part.”

The corner of his lips twist into a smile. His eyes sparkle in delight. “If you feel sorry for me, that must mean that you care about me, Ames.” 

She laughs him off, blushing. “In what - no - I don’t know what gave you that impression.” 

“You’re flustered,” he points out, smiling wider. 

“Shut up,” she groans, burying her head in her hands. 

He pulls her hands away, intertwining their fingers. “I’m sorry about your divorce,” he says sincerely. 

“I’m sorry about your memory problems.”

He squeezes her hand. She relaxes, staring up at the sky, dotted with stars.

“ _Is that a dinosaur_?”

She glances over at Jake; he’s staring at the stars, too. 

“Here.” He uses his free hand to tilt her head in the right direction, describing the T-Rex constellation until she finds it. 

“I think it might be,” she giggles, taking a picture of the dinosaur, and a selfie of the two of them, even though she knows it will disappear by morning. She’ll never forget this moment anyway, not even a million time loops from now. 

She shivers, the wind turning chilly, and they retreat to their tent. 

Huddled next to him for warmth, an infinite time loop companion turned personal space heater, she thinks about the first night on that rock, not far from here. She thinks about wrapping her legs around his torso in Shaw’s Bar. About his reaction when she kissed his cheek. She thinks about her candy bar, how she wasted it with a Mounds like Teddy, when she could’ve been having Twix. 

She thinks _screw it_. She’s not wasting anymore time. He’s hot. She’s hot. There’s obviously a connection between them. What are they waiting for?

“Jake,” she says.

“Hmm?”

“ _Jake_ ,” she says a little louder, tapping him on the shoulder. “Let’s just get this over with and fuck.”

“Let’s just get this over with and fuck: title of your sextape?”

She rolls her eyes, climbing on top of him, and kisses him to shut him up. There’s a sense of urgency, a knowledge that this moment is fleeting, that this day will reset, driving them on. 

She pulls her dress over her head and unfastens her bra, shivering again, before kissing him to steal some more warmth. 

She helps him with his own shirt, throwing it carelessly to the other side of the tent. 

“Wait,” he stops her and for a second she panics that she did something wrong, that she’s not a good enough kisser, that her boobs are too small. 

Then he looks at her with such... awe. Like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Like this is the moment he’s been waiting a thousand time loops for. Like maybe he’s falling in love with her, too. 

He opens his mouth as if he wants to tell her, but he falters, overwhelmed, and goes back in for a kiss instead. 

Their moans become a part of the desert soundtrack: insects buzzing, the smouldering fire, a coyote's howl, _Jake and Amy_. 

She lies awake long after they’re done, long after Jake himself has gone to sleep, wanting to memorise every contour of his face, every curl in his hair. Closing her eyes means resetting, waking up in different beds, missing out on early morning kisses and ordering breakfast to their room and doing it again before they get dressed. 

She drinks him in, kissing him softly one last time, and admits defeat. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

The mattress is a welcome change from the desert floor, the A/C, too. And despite the pang of disappointment when she rolls over and Jake’s gorgeous face is no longer there, she’s never felt more content. 

Last night was perfect. The stars, the finger sandwiches stolen from the wedding, the sex. The way he kissed her. The way he stared at her when they stopped kissing. And the way he kissed her again. Falling asleep had never felt so good. 

Nothing could ruin this moment. 

Lying in bed, listening to the water run, thoughts consumed by Jake, she doesn’t put two and two together, doesn’t remember the basic premise of the time loop: this is today, yesterday is today, and tomorrow is also today.

She stays in bed a little too long. 

The shower shuts off and a hairy, shirtless Pimento steps out, a towel slung low on his hips. 

And suddenly she remembers. _The rehearsal dinner._

She’d stepped outside for a shame cigarette, all the talk about relationships and love and happily ever afters making her feel pretty fucking terrible about herself and her perpetual ‘Single’ status since the divorce. Teddy had already moved on and she couldn’t even get a guy to swipe right on Tinder. 

Maybe it was the effect of the four (large) glasses of wine, maybe it was loneliness, maybe it was the fact he was the first person all day who didn’t ask her if she brought a date to the wedding, but, whatever the reason, she found herself kissing him on the porch outside his own rehearsal dinner. 

Before she knew it, they were in his room, she was tearing off the suit Rosa picked out, and he was yanking her dress over her head. 

It was fast, and not even that good, and it wasn’t until she woke up on her sister’s wedding day that it hit her just what she’d done. And then she followed Jake into a glowing orange cave and the rest was history. 

She suddenly realises she can’t do this anymore. She can’t stay here, she can’t keep falling in love with Jake, only to wake up back in her sister’s husband’s bed every morning, tormented by the worst mistake she’s ever made. She’s got to get out. 

She throws on her dress, running out of Pimento’s room and straight into Jake’s chest. 

“Woah, slow down, Ames,” he laughs. “Desperate to see me this morning or something?”

“Mm-hmm,” she nods, trying really hard not to cry or throw up or both. 

“Kind of felt a little different waking up this morning, you know, kinda nice,” he says shyly. “Because of last night.” 

“Oh, right, yeah.” It felt different alright. 

He narrows his eyes at her and she silently curses him for knowing her so well. “Is that a good _yeah_ or a I-wish-it-never-happened-please-stop-talking-about-it _yeah_?”

“It was fun,” she says and her voice is so flat she doesn’t even believe herself. 

“Sounds like it,” he responds sarcastically, not buying it either. 

“Let’s go for a drive.”

She doesn’t say anything for the first ten miles, eyes trained on the road as she psychs herself up. Maybe he’ll understand, she tries to convince herself. Maybe he’ll want to come with her. She steals a glance at him - he’s playing some Mario game on his phone - and chews on her lower lip. 

“I can’t keep waking up here,” she finally breaks the silence. 

“The waking up is always weird,” he agrees, putting his phone down, and she knows, because he’s complained about Sophia in almost every version of this day. “But hey,” his lips turn into a smile, “at least going to bed just got a lot better.”

She should’ve been clearer, she realises. Should’ve told him she doesn’t want to go to bed here either. She wants out of Palm Springs entirely, out of the loop. 

She checks her mirrors, his cute, hopeful smile almost unbearable to look at, and notices a convertible that’s been behind them for a while. She presses her foot on the gas, noticing it speed up to maintain the distance between them. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“What?” 

“The fact that we had sex, like... nine hours ago,” he reminds her. “You said that we should have sex and then we did. And now you’re not talking to me.”

She shrugs, still focused on their tail. “What’s there to talk about? It doesn’t matter that we had sex. Everything is meaningless, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yeah, but... I didn’t mean _that._ Us.”

“Speaking of us,” she swiftly changes the subject, more pressing matters at hand, “someone’s following us.” 

The convertible is much closer now. Close enough that if she slammed on her brakes, it would go into the back of them. 

Jake looks out of his mirror and squints. “Is that a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder in Raspberry Sherbet?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” She snarls, accelerating. The convertible accelerates with her, the distance between them getting smaller and smaller. 

“It’s kind of important, Ames.”

“It’s a Chevrolet. And it looks pretty raspberry coloured to me. Why does it matter?”

“Because that’s Gertie. _Ray’s_ car.” 

“Motherfucker,” she curses, pulling over sharply. 

Gertie pulls in behind them. 

“Amy, what the _fuck_ ,” Jake panics. “He’s gonna kill me, I know you’ve been acting weird all morning, but-.”

“Peralta,” Ray says in that low, distinguished timbre that makes him a thousand times creepier, appearing beside the passenger side of the car. He reaches through Jake’s open window, grabbing him by his Hawaiian shirt and dragging him onto the road. 

Amy slowly unbuckles her seatbelt, trying not to make a sudden move, and opens her door while Ray is preoccupied, tiptoeing around the back of the car and removing the suitcase from her trunk and using it to knock Ray out cold. 

“Suck my dick, you son of a bitch.”

Jake stares at her in horror. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

“I was trying to save you,” she says, like it’s obvious. 

“There were other ways to save me,” he argues. “Pain is real, remember?”

“Oh please. Nothing matters. He’ll be fine tomorrow.” 

“ _Pain_ matters,” he repeats, pissed. “What we do to other people _matters_. It doesn’t matter that everything resets and people don’t remember. _We_ remember. We have to deal with the things that we do.”

She waves a dismissive hand. “I was helping you. You were never gonna deal with him, so I did.”

“What has gotten into you?” He furrows his brow. “Why do you even have a suitcase in your trunk?”

“I’m leaving.” It’s not the way she wanted to announce it, on the side of a road with his arch-nemesis unconcious between them, but since nothing matters-.

“You can’t leave,” he says, his tone tinged with sadness. 

“I can’t go back to that fucking ranch, Jake.”

“But _I’m_ there.”

“I know,” she casts her eyes down. That’s the hard part.

“So don’t go.”

“Jake,” she sighs his name. “I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s _always_ a choice. You’re just making the wrong one, which is ironically what got you stuck in this mess in the first place.”

“Fuck you,” she spits, his words striking a nerve. Of all people, she never expected to be judged by him. “And I didn’t make _the wrong choice_ going into that cave,” she uses air quotation marks. “I followed you in because, God forbid, I actually liked you and someone was trying to hurt you. Because _I give a shit_ , something you clearly know _nothing_ about. The only _wrong choice_ I made was caring about you. If I’d have known I was going to get stuck with a Die Hard-obsessed alcoholic for the rest of eternity, I would’ve stayed so far away from you. And I sure as hell would never have fucked you,” she goes for the jugular. 

“We’ve fucked like a thousand times,” he retaliates as she starts to walk away, stopping her in her tracks. 

She turns around slowly. “What did you just say to me?”

“I lied, OK? We did hook up before you got here. A lot. All I had to do was give that ridiculous speech at the wedding and you jumped me every time. But it was different then! It was always just gonna reset and then you got stuck in here and... I don’t know, I should’ve told you, but we had something good, you know? And I didn’t want to ruin it.”

“I’m officially getting out of this day,” she decides, walking into the middle of the road. 

The last thing she sees is a truck barrelling towards her. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

Jake opens his eyes. He’s back in their hotel room, wearing his blue tee. Sophia is moisturising her leg. Amy is... not banging on their door. 

_Why is Amy not banging on their door?_

He waits for Sophia to finish getting ready and leave for the ceremony, before hauling his ass out of bed and heading for the pool. 

Maybe she’s already there, waiting for him on her flamingo, ready to commence another round of their inflatable float race. 

She’s not and she isn’t. 

Cracking open a beer, he flops onto his pizza float. 

He’s been here a million times, mastered the art of doing nothing and being alone. But it feels different now. The sun is too bright, the beer is too warm, the pizza isn’t inflated enough. Everything is off without her. 

He decides to walk into the cave at 10:14, smashing the record for his shortest day in the loop. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_.”

He opens his eyes, back in bed. 

He looks hopefully at the door. 

Nothing. 

He groans, going back to sleep. 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

Still no Amy. Still no Amy. Still no Amy. 

* * *

**1:57 PM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

He thinks he sees her at the bar and he marches over to ask her where the hell she has been, if she has anything to say for herself after worrying him sick, and then kiss her face off. 

“Amy Santiago, where the _hell-_.”

The dark-haired lady turns round and she’s, like, fifty. 

“Wrong person, sorry, ma’am,” he blushes, heading for the cave to escape this misery. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_ ,” a familiar voice whispers. 

He opens his eyes, the sinking feeling in his stomach worse than ever. Amy is gone. G-O-N-E. And she’s not coming back. 

But he can’t accept it. He knows he should - she made her feelings quite clear when she walked into oncoming traffic just to get away from him -, but there’s a nagging feeling in his chest that has to do something. Her words about him not giving a shit ringing in his ears, he knows he at least has to try. 

He doesn’t even bother getting dressed, earning himself a few stares from the hotel guests and members of staff setting up the wedding as he knocks on every door of Calmada in just his boxers, asking if anyone has seen her. 

“Very pretty, Cuban, long hair - here,” he opens her Instagram and clicks on a selfie, looking back at the guest hopefully. 

“Sorry, man,” he shuts the door in his face. 

Jake exhales heavily, knocking on the next door along. 

To his surprise, Adrian opens it.

“Peralta!” He yells. “S’up dude? Come on in!”

He’s wired, even for Adrian’s standards, with a suspicious white powder around his nose. 

Jake sits on the end of the bed, staring at the groom in disbelief. “Are you seriously snorting coke right now? An hour before your wedding?”

“Yeah. Why? You want some?” 

“No, I don’t want some.”

Adrian shrugs and does another line, before dancing out the room to go live his Nancy Meyers’ dream. 

Jake cannot believe this. He falls backwards. This place is insane. These people are insane. This _day_ is insane. 

He narrows his eyes, smelling something familiar. He sniffs around the bed, locating the smell to the pillow on the right hand side. He lifts the offending item to his nose and breathes it in. Orchid Explosion by Fournier. 

_Amy_. 

_Amy_ slept here last night? 

He looks at the remaining occupants of the room. It’s not unheard of for a Maid of Honor and Best Man to hook up at a wedding, even though he hates the thought of her with one of these coked-up losers. 

“Were any of you here last night, too?”

“Nah, man, Pimento took it. Apparently Nancy says it’s bad luck to sleep with the bride the night of the wedding.”

_Pimento_?

That means...

“You sick son of a bitch!” He roars, crashing the wedding before Terry can even ask if anybody objects. 

“What the hell, Peralta?” He chuckles nervously. “Trying to get married here.”

“You and Amy. It all makes sense now.”

Rosa lets go of her groom’s hands, turning to Jake. “What makes sense?” she grunts. 

Amy’s told him before that there’s a knife hiding in Rosa’s garter, just in case, so Jake swallows, his explanation coming out in a jumbled rush. “Your soon-to-be husband and your sister smooshed booties - sorry, Victor,” he apologises for the poor choice of words. “She wakes up with him every single day and then sneaks out every morning. God, no wonder she hates herself.” He shakes his head, then remembers he has proof. He procures the pillow from behind his back. “Smell this.”

Pimento rolls his eyes. “He’s totally drunk, babe. He’s _always_ drunk. I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Rosa eyes him suspiciously, taking the pillow off Jake and sniffing. 

“Orchid Explosion by Fournier,” they say at the same time.

“Told you,” he smirks. 

Rosa reaches for her hair and - oh, fun, there’s a knife hidden there, too. She points it at Adrian. “You fucked my sister?”

“Smooshed booties,” Jake interjects, withering under her glare. 

“I can explain-.”

“No, _I_ can explain.” Jake opens his arms wide, addressing their guests. “None of you appreciated Amy enough. She’s amazing, you know? Smart, funny, sexy as hell.” He meets Victor’s eyes and coughs awkwardly. “You all made her feel like shit, like she wasn’t good enough just because she isn’t married with kids or couldn’t get a date for her sister’s wedding. Because of you, she drank four wines and, as we all know, four drink Amy’s a bit of a perv. And yeah, she slept with her sister’s fiancé. She made a mistake. We all do. But also she shouldn’t be entirely to blame because Pimento is a cokehead and I have it on good authority that he’s fucked as many people here as I have.”

There are gasps around the room, whispers of “ _who is he_?” and “ _how does he know our Amy?_ ” 

Before he can announce that he is Jacob _Sherlock_ Peralta and he is her infinite time loop companion slash one-time tent lover, Adrian tackles him to the ground. They wrestle, Jake pulling his hair, Pimento ripping a dozen or so palm trees off Jake’s shirt in the form of a sleeve. There’s face slaps, biting, knees to the gut, spitting. The flower arrangements Camila spent hours on go flying. Pimento grabs a knife from his sock and presses the blade into Jake’s neck. 

Out of nowhere, in what can only be described as a move he’s learned from watching too much Die Hard, Jake steals the knife off him. In the half-second he stops to celebrate how dope that must’ve looked, Pimento has his hand over Jake’s and they’re grappling with the blade. 

Pimento suddenly lets out a blood-curdling scream that echoes through all of Palm Springs. “THERE’S A KNIFE IN MY KNEE!” 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

The next day is decidedly more chill. There’s no major revelations, no fighting, no trips to the ER. 

Everything is back to normal. 

Even Adrian is doing the Running Man in the middle of the dance floor, his knee no longer punctured and spurting blood.

It’s both a gift and a burden to be the only one to remember. It means he still has his memories with Amy and, in a totally Santiago-like fashion, he makes a list of them every single day to make sure he never forgets again. It also means he’s back on good terms with Victor after his less-than-appropriate speech. But there’s also guilt, as he watches the happy couple dance, knowing what Pimento has done, knowing why the Maid of Honor has mysteriously disappeared. 

Victor and Camila get up to sing a song, A Lover’s Concerto, reminding the newlyweds that love can get you through anything. 

Jake downs his drink in preparation. 

He’s seen this performance a hundred times and Camila may well be a worse singer than her daughter, which is saying something. Jake remembers karaoke night at Shaw’s with a fond smile. Never before has he actually listened to the lyrics though. Never before has he had a reason to care about A Lover’s Concerto, never has he even had a lover that he actually loved. 

And then Camila sings “ _some magic from above made this day just for us to fall in love_ ” and he starts to sob. 

He feels an arm slide around his shoulder and it’s Charles - of course it is. 

“I love Amy,” he confesses, tears streaming down his face as he fields a million questions.

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up._ ”

He groans, squeezing his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to wake up to another day without Amy. He doesn’t want to see the same four walls of this room. He sure as hell doesn’t want to see Sophia’s stupid, silky leg. 

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” she insists, giving him a shove.

“I don’t _wanna_.” He pouts. 

She shoves him harder and he falls to the floor with a loud thump. “We have a wedding to go to, idiot.”

He groans, standing up and rubbing his head. That really hurt. He pulls on his shirt and shorts, balling up the blue tee and pinging it off Sophia’s head, before getting the fuck out of Palm Springs. 

He drives into the suburbs, his saddest Taylor Swift playlist blasting through the speakers. Since he’s never actually been here before, he makes two wrong turns, but eventually pulls up outside a nice looking suburban house, with a perfectly manicured lawn and a white picket fence. 

Ray lives _here_?

He climbs over the fence and stands on said lawn, shouting up at the house. “I give up, Ray! You win.”

He opens the door immediately, an unreadable expression on his face. 

“Torture me, fuck me, kill me, do whatever you want to do to my body,” Jake continues. “I don’t care anymore.”

A small kid, no older than four, peddles his bike past the house, his mother shooting a horrified look in Jake’s direction. He waves at her, nonplussed. 

He was right all along: nothing fucking matters. 

“Peralta, that’s enough,” Ray insists. “Get in here.”

Reluctantly, Jake walks up the path lined by flowers, not a weed in sight. He’s even more impressed when he steps inside. Who knew Ray’s house would be so... _nice_. 

“I’m going to have to write an apology message on the neighbourhood Facebook now,” he complains. Jake has heard him lament modern technology before, when he took him out for dinner under the guise of making amends and slipped some poison into the wine. That was a particularly crappy way to die, close behind getting stung by a thousand bees and having the pool set alight, beloved pizza float and all. 

It’s almost impossible to recognize the Ray that burned him alive with the one standing in front of him in his cashmere sweater and smart slacks. He looks like a harmless grandpa. 

A man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches emerges from the library, a stack of old books in his arms. He stops suddenly at the sight of a new visitor. 

“Jake Peralta,” Jake introduces himself. “I’m Ray’s best friend.”

“Oh. I see. I’m Kevin, Ray’s husband. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Yes, well, he’s an old friend, we’ll take Cheddar out, don’t want to bother you.” Ray whistles and a corgi comes dashing from a different direction. _There are so many rooms in this house._

Jake follows them outside, staring at a yard even bigger than the massive one out front. 

Ray passes him a beer and gestures for him to sit down. He takes the seat next to Jake, Cheddar curling up at his feet. 

“Nice place,” is all Jake can muster. 

“Not bad, huh? Husband, house, dog. I’m living the dream.”

“Apart from the infinite time loop thing,” Jake reminds him. 

He doesn’t respond. 

“I haven’t seen you in a while.” 

“Miss me, son?” Ray raises his eyebrows. Jake thinks he detects the hint of a teasing smile, but rejects it as him having a stroke, or something. He hasn’t seen him smile since he declared November 9th the greatest night of his life. 

“Miss being chased, shot with arrows and burnt alive?” He quips, then admits that yeah, maybe he does. “A little bit. Was better than being alone, anyway.”

“Where’s the girl?”

“Dunno.” He sips his beer. “Haven’t seen her since the day she whacked you round the head with the suitcase.”

“I was actually going to thank her for that,” he responds, as if Jake didn’t think he could possibly have any more surprises up his sleeve. 

“She put you in hospital,” he states the obvious. 

“Indeed she did. I’ve been angry at you for a very long time. Rightfully so, you did get me stuck in an infinite time loop. However, my brief stint in the hospital made me realise what I’d put you through. It also made me realise that my life here is pretty great. I’ve got Kevin, and Cheddar, and the weather is always great, and I read while Kevin shears the roses and we drink wine and listen to classical music and take Cheddar for walks twice a day. It’s the life I’ve wanted since I was a little boy and I am _never_ going to take it for granted again.”

Ray glances over at him, at his unruly curls, crumpled shirt and tired eyes. He cuts a broken figure. 

“You have to find your Kevin,” he says as a little fatherly advice. 

“I don’t have a Kevin.”

“We _all_ have a Kevin. You have Suitcase Girl.”

“Her name’s Amy,” Jake corrects him. 

Ray studies him again, the way his shoulders are hunched, the way his hair is wilder than usual, the sadness behind his eyes. And he solves it like one of his Sudoku’s. “You brought her into the cave, didn’t you?”

“Technically, she followed me in. And everything was really great and then it wasn’t.” He casts his eyes down at Cheddar and thinks it would be pretty great to be stuck in a time loop if you were a dog. There’d be no stress, no worries, no pretty Maid of Honor’s to fall in love with. “She wanted to leave and we had a fight,” he finished telling the story, offering Cheddar a treat. 

He accepts it happily and immediately goes back to sleeping in the sun. 

“And now she’s gone and you both have to suffer through this alone,” Ray fills in the gaps, shaking his head. “I cannot imagine.”

Hearing it out loud, Jake is struck by the reality that he really _is_ alone now. He doesn’t even have a cool arch nemesis trying to kill him anymore. He sniffles, fighting the tears. “Kill me one last time?”

Ray takes him in - this defeated shell of a man - and feels bad for him. He instructs him to climb into the recycling bin, pulling out the arrow from that night at the cave. 

“I hope you find her,” he says sincerely, before firing at Jake. He collapses and the bin lid shuts closed. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

Amy opens her eyes, immediately climbing out of bed and marching into the bathroom, a woman on a mission. 

She tears back the shower curtain, revealing a naked Pimento. She has some things to say. She’s perfected it now, this many loops in. Yet it still kickstarts her day in the best possible way, like a protein shake or cup of coffee. 

“Last night should never have happened,” she tells him, her voice firm, unwavering. “It was a stupid, drunken, awful mistake and we both deserve every single fucking terrible thing that comes our way because of it. We’re very shitty people... but I’m done being shitty.”

He breaks down in tears, as he does every morning, and she turns the water to cold. _Now_ she’s done being shitty. 

* * *

**10:40 AM. November 9th. A Crash Course in Quantum Physics. Palm Springs Public Library. Palm Springs, CA.**

After reading every book on Quantum Physics and time travel the Palm Springs Public Library has to offer (so: _five_ ), the 80-year old librarian with glasses on a chain around her neck, who introduces herself as Genevieve, suggests Google may have more to offer. 

Amy is loathe to admit that a computer may know more than _books_ , but opens up the search engine anyway. She types in quantum suicide, surprised when her search comes back with several thousand results. She clicks on the first page and starts reading. 

She hears the person on the computer next to her pack up and leave and the next person sit back down. She keeps reading, scribbling notes in a Palm Springs Public Library Notebook she forked out $25 for. 

She watches a Stephan Hawking TED Talk, her eyes glued to the screen, and slowly pieces together the puzzle. 

* * *

**4:57 PM. November 9th. A Crash Course in Quantum Physics. Palm Springs Public Library Palm Springs, CA.**

It becomes a routine. Wake up, drive to the library, read everything she can, pass out at her computer or get kicked out when they close, whichever comes first. 

Genevieve checks in on her every hour, making sure she stays hydrated and takes regular breaks away from the screen. She shows Amy her paintings and tells her about her grandchildren and listens as she tries to make sense of the advanced papers she’s reading. 

It’s nice to have a friend. Even if she does forget who she is every morning. 

* * *

**10:14 AM. November 9th. A Crash Course in Quantum Physics. The Cave. Palm Springs, CA.**

Her tongue pokes out her mouth in concentration as she measures the mouth of the cave, jotting it down in her notebook and making some calculations. 

She strides into the cave, staring at a stopwatch, the orange light swells, engulfing her, and then she’s back in the ranch, the shower running. 

_3.2 seconds._

* * *

**2:00 PM. November 9th. A Crash Course in Quantum Physics. Two Daughter’s Diner. Palm Springs, CA.**

She smiles gratefully at the waitress who brings her another coffee, refocusing on the Skype call with the Cambridge Professor on her screen. 

“We’re kind of circling determinism, so there’s really only one possible future given the laws of our universe-.”

“Wait,” she interrupts, narrowing her eyes. She just read about this. “Hintz argued that a Reissner-Nordstrom-de Sitter black hole would allow an observer access to the indeterministic universe on the other side of the Cauchy horizon.”

The Professor stares back at her, dumbfounded. “You said you’ve been studying Quantum Physics for two months? That is _remarkable_ insight for a beginner.”

She shrugs. Within the laws of the time loop it’s technically only been half a day, but she’s not sure that even a Doctorate from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world could prepare him for a conversation about caves that glow orange and somehow surviving getting hit by a truck driving at 60 mph. “I’m a fast learner,” she tells him instead. It’s not a lie - she _did_ skip Fourth Grade - and besides, she’s not doing that anymore. No more lies, no more cheating, no more deception from here on in. 

“Clearly. I’m impressed,” he replies, closing his book. “I do not think my assistance is required any further. Good luck with your novel, Miss Santiago. I hope to receive a signed copy in the post.”

She quickly ends the call. OK, one more lie. A tiny one. Just so he wouldn’t think she was _completely_ insane. 

* * *

**11:40 PM. November 9th. A Crash Course in Quantum Physics. The Cave. Palm Springs, CA.**

OK, maybe she is a little insane. 

She _is_ about to blow up a goat and she _did_ name him McClane, after a terrible Bruce Willis movie that she doesn’t even like, but it’s all in the name of science. She needed a test subject in order to prove her hypothesis about how to escape the loop. The goat, like his namesake, would be a hero. 

She clips some C4 onto him like a saddle and leads him into the cave.

She runs back out alone and hides behind the large rock, counting to three, closing her eyes and detonating. 

There’s a burst of orange light, but McClane never reappears. 

“Eureka!!!” She screams, her limbs flying in all directions in what Jake calls her signature dork dance. 

She rushes to the library, announces that she’s finally done it and pulls a confused Genevieve into a tight hug. 

She’s on the end of a librarian’s shush for the first time in her life, but she couldn’t care less. Nothing matters. They’re getting out of here. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up_.”

He opens his eyes immediately. That’s a different voice to normal. A voice he hasn’t heard in a while. He rolls over and there she is, sitting at the end of his bed. 

There’s Amy. 

He blinks rapidly, pinching himself to make sure he isn’t having another dream. But he doesn’t wake up. She’s really here. 

“You’re really here,” he whispers, his voice filled with awe. 

“I’m really here.”

“You... you look great.” 

“Yeah, well, I can’t age. You know, I’m stuck in one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.”

“I might have heard about?” He laughs, properly laughs, for the first time since she left. 

“How have you been?”

He sobers, fiddling with the corner of the bed sheet. “Bad,” he says honestly. “Really, really bad.” He stands up and starts to pace. “I’m sorry for lying, Ames, for not telling you about our past. It was dumb and stupid and unfair. I don’t blame you for being mad and I don’t blame you for staying away for so long, but I’ve had a lot of time to think and, I don’t know, I feel like we had something really good going before I screwed it up, you know? Do you think there’s any way we could just... start over?”

“Are you done?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I found a way out.”

She starts explaining her theory at a thousand words a minute, dragging him into the bathroom. 

“And though the chronology protection hypothesis and quantum fluctuations theoretically don’t allow for traveling back in time, it really comes down to nature always inhibiting us,” she finishes up. “So, the general consensus is to eradicate the energy source and all should reset.”

Jake stares at her blankly. 

“Nature prevents time travel,” she explains in simpler terms. “The earthquake broke nature.”

“Right,” he says unconvincingly. 

She grabs Sophia’s make-up bag, rifles through it, and pulls out a red lipstick. She pops the top off and draws a tube onto the mirror. 

“This is the cave. It’s also life, birth and death, our consciousness, the timeline we all live on, but it’s simpler to think of it solely as the cave. We enter here-,” she points at the left end of the tube, “and what’s supposed to happen in life is we just walk through this tube to the other end, continuing on this regular timeline.” Her finger follows the length of the drawing. “But, much like an earthquake can break pipes underground, it broke our pipe.”

She circles a middle section of the tube. 

“This is the part where it all turns orange, where we’re sucked in. For exactly 3.2 seconds we lose control of our bodies, and what’s happening is we’re being sucked down into this fissure caused by the earthquake, back to the moment we wake up.” She draws an arrow from the fissure back to the start and looks at Jake. “You understand so far?”

“I missed you.”

She glares at him. “This is serious, Jake.”

“Yes,” he says, squinting at the lipstick diagram. “I understand so far.”

“The fissure is just a highly concentrated energy source. We’re trapped in a box of energy.” She draws a box around the graphic, then draws two arrows pointing out. “If we can destroy the energy source in that 3.2 second window, we can break out the box. At least that’s the theory.”

“And then what happens?”

“I don’t know, maybe we wake up and it’s today, maybe it’s twenty years from now, or we’re dead under a pile of rocks. I can’t be sure of any of it, that’s why it’s a theory. But we have to try.”

“And by break the box, you mean-.”

“We blow ourselves up,” she finishes his sentence. 

“Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.” He nods. 

“It’s smart, right?”

“I mean, yeah, you used a lot of words I don’t understand, but I dunno, Ames. We’ve died hundreds of times, but we’re still stuck in this box. What makes this time any different? I don’t want you to set yourself up for more disappointment.”

“I’m not setting myself up for more disappointment,” she assures him. “I tested it.”

He does a double-take. Of all the crazy things she’s said - of Cauchy horizons, and fissures, and energy sources - her _testing_ it is somehow the craziest. She was an Art History Major investigating complex scientific theories. “You tested it, _how_?”

“Blew up the goat that always hangs around the cave. I called him McClane, by the way.”

“Dope name,” he approves. “Should call him Mac for short.”

“OK, _Mac_ ,” she grins at him, “is gone. I don’t know where he went, but he isn’t here anymore.”

“The goat’s gone?”

“Mm-hmm. Crazy, right? So let’s go to the wedding and after that we can go back to the cave and get the fuck out of here.”

“Tonight?” He splutters. “Why tonight? What’s the rush?”

“You’ve been trapped here forever, Jake. Don’t you want to get out? Finally see November 10th?”

He thinks about it for a second before deciding no. “Not at all. I don’t want to leave. I wanna stay with you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nothing we’re doing here matters. It isn’t real.”

“It’s real to me,” he says seriously. “I love you.”

Amy doesn’t say anything, doesn’t throw her arms around him and proclaim that she loves him, too. She doesn’t move, just rolls her eyes again and tells him that he can’t possibly, that he only _thinks_ he loves her because she’s the only other person stuck in the loop with him. 

“Not true. I’ve been stuck here with Ray longer and I don’t love him. Although I did think until recently that he was a robot incapable of love.”

After learning advanced quantum physics in two months and figuring out how to escape the inescapable, it’s a simple declaration of love that has Amy confused. 

“So you’re saying,” she summarises, “that out there in the real world, with millions of other people to choose from, you would still choose me?”

“Yeah. Of course.” It’s a no-brainer. “But the point is, why would I want to go back there anyway? It’s a world with death and poverty and people who don’t like Die Hard. In here we’d get to be together forever.”

“I want my life back, Jake.”

“Why? It’s not like things were going so great for you out there either,” he quips. “Divorced, fucking your sister’s fiancé. If your plan works out, that’s a whole other mess you’re going to have to deal with.”

The colour drains from her face. 

“How do you know about that? Nobody knows about that.”

“Orchid Explosion by Fournier. But I don’t care about your past,” he breezes past his explanation. “The past doesn’t matter to me. Remember the candy bar?”

She shakes her head, her eyes welling with tears. “I can’t keep waking up there, Jake.”

“Just ignore it,” he pleads. “Like I do with Sophia.” He suddenly realises he has yet to see his girlfriend’s leg this morning. “Speaking of Sophia, where is she?” He gasps, then lowers his voice to a secretive hush. “ _Did you blow her up, too_?”

“Of course not,” she rolls her eyes. “I told her there was something gross on Rosa’s veil and she disappeared pretty quick. Look, Jake,” she sighs. “I need my life back. And I am asking if you want to leave this place and come with me.”

“And I’m saying no,” he responds, hating the look that crosses her face. “But I’m also asking you to stay.”

She shakes her head sadly and folds herself into his arms. 

And they say goodbye. 

* * *

**10:39 AM. November 9th. Rosa and Adrian’s Wedding. Rancho Calmada. Palm Springs, CA.**

She collects herself enough to be there to help Rosa into her dress, to tell her she looks beautiful, and pose for pictures. They do a fun one, back-to-back, for Instagram and Amy really hopes it will be there when she wakes up. 

Sophia arrives late, her make-up ruined, wailing that Jake just broke up with her. 

Amy shoots her a sad, closed-mouthed smile, pulling her into a hug. She gets it. She just broke up with Jake, too, and her heart feels like it’s in a million pieces. 

She promises there will be someone else as Terry walks into the room to ask if the bride is ready and Sophia’s eyes light up. 

Panicking slightly that this is all _her_ fault, she helps Sophia fix her make-up and reminds her that she doesn’t have to move on right away. 

“No, I’m gonna.” She applies her lipstick, smacks her lips together, then announces that she’s ready. 

The music starts and they walk down the aisle. It’s bittersweet, knowing this is the last time she’ll see her sister get married. She finally pays attention to the vows. Nancy Meyers would be proud, she thinks. And when the time comes, she gets up to give her Maid of Honor speech, ignoring everything she had written and speaking from the heart. 

“When I was twelve, I had just started at this new school. I didn’t know anyone and was truly terrified of everything. I kept having these nightmares - really, really awful ones - until one morning, I woke up and found Rosa asleep next to me, holding me. She’d heard me crying in my sleep and at five years old, she crawled into my bed and stayed with me because she thought that would help. And I never had another nightmare. She’s always had my back. Forever and ever and ever.” She stands up and hugs her tightly. “And Pimento,” she threatens, “do not fuck this up.”

She drains her drink and Pimento screams that he loves his wife and everyone floods the dance floor. Amy hovers by the table, watching. She thinks about Jake, and their choreographed routine and how he made her feel like she could dance like Beyoncé. She smiles at the memory and joins in. 

* * *

**9:40 PM. November 9th. Shaw’s Bar. Palm Springs, CA.**

“This is not how you and Amy are supposed to end!” Charles cries, in every version of the loop he gets more and more invested in them. “You’re supposed to grow old and die holding each other as your cruise ship slowly takes home water.” 

Jake rolls his eyes and gestures to the bartender for another beer. The problem is just that: they’re supposed to grow old but they _can’t_ and he doesn’t want to. 

(Why anybody would want grey hair and wrinkles is completely beyond him, but that’s besides the point).

“You started this with one foot out the door, with your whole ‘nothing matters’ attitude. That’s what doomed you. Not the universe.”

“That’s actually a really good point,” he admits. Although the time loop thing is the universe’s fault, too. “So what do I do? I really love her, Charles.”

“That’s easy. You march over there and tell her how you feel.”

“You’re right.” He smiles. “I’m gonna go over there. I’m gonna tell her how I feel.” He downs the drink and gets up to leave, Charles stopping him with a hand on his arm. 

“Wait til it starts raining- wait, no, we’re in the desert, that’s crazy, go now.”

“OK.”

Jake runs back to the ranch, commandeers Rosa’s motorcycle and races towards the cave. 

When he gets there, Amy is already wearing the vest lined with C4 over her dress, already walking towards the orange light. 

“WAIT, AMES,” he cries desperately, hopping off the bike and stopping her at the entrance. “I get it now. I was scared, but I’m not anymore. We’re all lost, but somehow we found each other,” he quotes himself. It’s extremely lame, but it’s also the truth. “Amy, from the moment I first saw you at that wedding-.”

“I don’t want another one of your speeches, Jake,” she sighs. “I’m tired of speeches.”

She looks at the cave, open and ready, then back to him. She concedes. 

“You get one more sentence.”

“Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool...” He gathers his thoughts. He definitely should’ve written this down first. 

“Even though I pretend not to be,” he begins, “I’ve realised that I am completely co-dependent, but I’m cool with it because I think that life should be shared now and I need you to survive-.”

“That’s your one sentence,” she says, her eyes flitting impatiently back to the cave. 

“No, no, no,” he holds out his hand, “I need you to survive... _COMMA_... but it’s so much more than that... _colon_... I know you better than anyone else… _comma_... for example, I know you only pretend to like Die Hard... _semi-colon_... that night in the tent, you said it yourself, in order to really know a person you have to see the entire package, their past as well as their present, the good stuff as well as the bad, and I’ve seen your package, Santiago, and it is excellent... title of your sex tape... _ampersand_ you’re the best person I know... and the best at inflatable pool float races... and yes, I know that it’s crazy odds that my favourite person in the entire world would be someone I met while stuck in an infinite time loop... _comma_... but you know what else has crazy odds... _question mark_... getting stuck in a time loop... _dot dot dot_ -.”

“Ellipses,” she corrects instinctively. 

“ _Ellipses_ , thank you, anyways, I hope that blowing ourselves up works but it’s really irrelevant to me because as long as I’m with you, I’m happy, no matter what and if it kills us, well then, I’d rather die with you than live in this world without you... _EMPHATIC period_.”

“That was a grammatical nightmare,” she deadpans. 

“Yeah,” he grimaces. “Grammar is totally your thing. I hope it didn’t distract from my point too much.”

“I mean... an emphatic period is just - it’s just an exclamation point.”

“I didn’t wanna seem desperate. Plus, sounds cooler.”

She rolls her eyes, then looks at the floor nervously. “What if we get sick of each other?”

“We’re already sick of each other, Ames,” he says softly. “It’s the _best_.”

She bites her lip. “I can survive just fine without you, you know. But... there’s a chance that this life could be a little less mundane with you in it.”

“Less mundane. That’s great. SUPER low bar. Great place to start,” he teases, making her laugh. “Come on, let’s see if we blow up and die.”

She grabs his hand and then walks towards the place this all began. Her, in her C4 vest and pink dress. Him, in his Hawaiian shirt and blue shorts. 

“Just so we’re clear,” he says, “Die Hard, totally a Christmas movie.”

“ _Not_ a Christmas movie, Jake.”

He glances back at the Palm Springs desert. “Can I change my mind or?”

“Nope,” she shuts him down. “You’ve already committed.”

“Damn it,” he curses. 

The orange light brightens on their faces. 

She turns to look at him. “In case I don’t see you again... I love you too.”

He smiles, his heart swelling with the orange light as she leans in to kiss him. 

Nothing else matters when their lips finally meet, her arm instinctively curling around his neck, his hands sweeping up her back. He’s never kissed like it and he’s never _been_ kissed like it; never felt such an instant and intense outpouring of love in a single moment. It’s kind of surreal, and he almost can’t keep up as Amy deepens the kiss, pulling him closer and closer. His competitive edge shifts into gear and he tilts his head, needing to _beat_ her at kissing, sweeping his tongue slowly and deliberately. He can feel the beginnings of a smile against his lips and smiles right back at her. 

Neither of them notice the orange light engulf them, shining brighter and brighter. 

She murmurs something, he presses his lips back against hers, and hears the click of the DETONATE button. 

* * *

**9:40 AM. November 10th. The beginning of the rest of their lives. Rancho Calmado. Palm Springs, CA.**

“ _Wake up,_ ” a familiar voice whispers. 

He opens his eyes immediately, a quick assessment confirming that - wait. Something’s different. He sits bolt upright. 

The bed is facing a different direction. 

And he’s _naked_.

Disoriented, he scans the room like a real-life game of spot the difference, noting the unfamiliar artwork on the walls, the pink dress strewn on the floor, two glasses of wine and a pile of quantum physics books sitting on the nightstand. 

“What are you doing, weirdo?” The familiar voice speaks again and his brain finally makes the connection. _Amy_. 

The last thing he remembers was the kiss, and Amy detonating the C4, and heat and darkness. He must be dreaming. There’s no way they survived, let alone timed the explosion to the exact second required to break out of the loop. He _must_ be dreaming. 

He reaches out his hand to pat her face, surprised when he feels something solid. He blinks rapidly and there she is, staring right back at him. 

“We did it?” He wonders out loud. 

“Looks like it,” she responds, biting her lip. “How’s that sinking feeling you always wake up with?”

“Gone,” he realises, mouth agape. “Completely gone. I feel...” He exhales, his mouth twisting into a smile. “ _Happy_.” 

A notification pings on his phone, reminding him that it’s November 10th, and he can get the fuck out of Palm Springs. He set it before he even arrived at ranch, unimpressed that Sophia was dragging him to some lame wedding in the middle of the desert when he could’ve spent the weekend playing Mario and sleeping in until noon. He often stared at it in his Calendar, losing hope that he’d ever see the day, that he’d actually escape November 9th. In his world, it was _always_ November 9th. 

Not anymore. 

This is his world now, him and Amy. And he can’t wait to discover what it has in store. 

He’s never lived this day before. He’s never lived November 10th. Or 11th. Or 12th. He’s never lived any day not knowing how it would end. Not for a long, long time. 

He may still be in Palm _fucking_ Springs (although honestly, the place has kind of grown on him now), but he is finally happy and with a girl who absolutely, 100% loves every part of him. 

He reaches back towards her, cupping her cheeks and drawing her in. The kiss is soft and gentle and she tastes like mint, because of course Amy Santiago would make sure to brush, floss and rinse with mouthwash before their first ever good morning kiss. 

He pulls away, eyes widening in panic. She’s awesome and good at doing things, including - but not limited to - remembering to floss, and he’s lucky if he remembers to brush twice a day. She’s better than him in every way imaginable; off doing things in the real world while he’s worn the same old Hawaiian shirt and shorts every day for a lifetime. His eyes bulge even wider at his second revelation. “I don’t know how to do laundry.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says without missing a beat. “I can teach you. But right now I’m not planning on wearing anything for at _least_ a day. Maybe two.”

“OK then,” he laughs, favouring the latter, not ready to return to reality quite yet either. 

She laughs, too, and makes herself comfortable against the headboard.

Outside the window, a new couple arrives at the ranch. 

“It’s a beautiful day for a wedding,” the groom declares.

Jake and Amy exchange a horrified look. 

“Yeah, we have _got_ to get out of here.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on tumblr (same username) you'll have seen just how long and hard i worked on this all week, would really really appreciate it if you could just take a minute after reading this to leave a comment and let me know what you thought


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